The Best And Worst Of WWE NXT 9/4/13: Friendship (And Sami Zayn) Is Magic

– Hey, click that “like” button. Then, figure out a way to turn “facebook likes” and “nice things said about NXT” into “job opportunities at WWENXT.com,” keeping in mind that I’ve said lots and lots of nasty things about their boss.

the only reason I’m not as much excited for bryan kicking hhh’s face, is because bryan has 1. made everyone insult a woman (I guess stephanie still counts as a woman or a human being anyways …) 2. childlishly painted someone else’s property 3. hinted at orton not being straight

basicly, while bryan is still killing it in the ring, he’s channeled john cena’s soul in his promos … and it sucks .. big time … or maybe it’s just me.

I’ve only been seriously watching wrestling since Wrestlemania, so my impression of Jack Swagger was “this doofus Kurt Angle wannabe with shaggy hair who kicked that way cooler guy really hard in the head.”

That… may still be an accurate assessment, actually, but in any case I had NO IDEA he could go that hard. Zayn vs. Cesaro I was so hyped for that even for how good it was (and it was impossibly good) it wasn’t as magical as I thought it would be. My expectations for this match were “there is NO WAY this is going to be anywhere close to Zayn’s last match” and then I proceeded to LOSE MY SHIT.

I’m with ya. Expectations are a dangerous thing and selling Cesaro/Zayn III as this amazing thing dulled the eventual match* (though I’ve warmed up to it and am at least happy that the hype came from a place of love). My response was better towards Swagger/Zayn due to it being as well wrestled a match with little hype behind it (less, actually, since Swagger has such a bad reputation from his main shows’ work).

*though, it could have also been that their first two matches were great too and their third was only progressively better than them rather than massively better

sometimes, less is more. and I never wanted to blame brandon for me not enjoying that cesaro/zayn match as much as he was when he was in attendance for it at the very end of a very awesome NXT taping overall .. but please, brandon, from now on, don’t spoil anything for us (assuming and praying that you go to see NXT live again .. because you deserve it after introducing this magical show to us that weren’t paying attention)

Brandon, I want to thank you for reaching into my mind and screaming about Alex Riley’s use of “irregardless”. THAT’S NOT A WORD! Outside of that, I don’t mind him. The bar for commentary in WWE is so low these days that someone who is boring as sin/talks about the Miz too much is still preferable to the chuckleheads on RAW. Even despite his entirely bizarre conversation about Alicia and Aksana.

BAYLEY WINS! I don’t care if it was a semi-clusterfuck finish in a so-so tag team match, SHE WON! I think this match exposed Charlotte a bit too much though, clearly she still needs to be carried in her matches. It makes Bayley however look like an even better performer though to mask green performers like that.

I admit I’m a bad person and laughed at LeFort’s claim that they’d go to Sizzler after winning their upcoming match. I also like Rusev for what he is, essentially he’s what WWE WANTS Mason Ryan to be. Sorry Mason, you just aren’t that at all. With the new influx of talent coming onto NXT and later onto RAW, it’s time for experiments like Mason and Aksana to go away.

Graves is staying in developmental forever. He just has to be. I predict Bo Freaking Dallas will see Raw/SD again before Graves even sniffs the main shows. He has absolutely nothing to show anyone…and I think I sort of enjoyed this week’s match only because he got the crap kicked out of him a ton. I also sort of enjoy blatant heel tactics like removing the “bandages” from injured body parts.

No Worst for the crowd IMMEDIATELY being sheep and chanting “We The People” with Swagger? Come on, crowd. Also, Bo Dallas is doing more in his role than HHH is on RAW in making me straight up hate a person. Just be a smug prick…don’t bore me with 15-minute interviews about the business. It’s not hard.

If Swagger keeps this up, I won’t be surprised to see the NXT audience continue to chant “We The People!”. Combined with everything Cesaro does, it just means happy times are coming. After a Corey Graves match, happy times are necessary.

The problem that plagues Tag wrestlers in singles matches is what has happened between The Ascension/Graves and Neville. I’m hoping The Ascension win the belts and become better as a team.

Zayn vs. Swagger should’ve ended with some kind of physical accident between Zayn and Bo Dallas, causing the distraction and Swagger picking up the win. In its current form the ending sucked, but was a great match overall.

Something awesome I noticed about Zayn, he gets the commentators behind him even though they’re trying to be objective. At one point Riley was saying “Come on, come on!” for him to get to the ropes while he was in the patriot lock, then quickly covered his ass by saying “I’m not rooting for anyone I just don’t want this match to end”, later the play by play guy whose name I forgot couldn’t stop himself from exclaiming “No!” when Swagger attacked Zayn while he was on the top rope. Sami Zayn love is infectious

I just got done looking at an Alex Riley vignette on youtube, and I ask myself:

What the hell happened to this guy?!

I mean he was getting a hell of a push. If it was done consistently and the right way Alex Riley could’ve been a hell of a heel and possibly (gulp) a perfect corporate champ. Then he hurts his hip and becomes Byron Saxton? Really? Really?

I like to think that every month, Triple H and crew are trying to decide if anyone should get brought up to the main roster, and they come across the Corey Graves file, notice his knuckle tattoos and go “Welp, he made his decision”

You think Corey Graves is bad now, you should have seen him when he was in the indies as Sterling James Keenan. Holy shit, all of these crappy companies would happily job out their champs to him because he was “the next big thing.” He was so boring and terrible. There was a show where the deviant Michael Hutter (Derrick Bateman) put on a solid match, and then the promoter grabs the mic and starts verbally sucking off Sterling James Keenan and how great it was to have a future WWE superstar there. Asshole, I just watched the great Michael Hutter, I know what talent looks like. Corey Graves looks like a starving homeless guy who is angry at YOU for him being homeless. Fuck Corey Graves.

I did. I saw him at AIW all the time when I lived in Cleveland. He was hot garbage back then, too, you’re right. It’s where my original animosity against him comes from. My long-running joke was “they hired this guy, but at least they haven’t hired Sterling James Keenan.” And then BOOM.

Im a Pittsburgh guy here. He was always a smarmy dick. I always hoped they’d pick up john mcChesney. John told me in 2007 that Graves would be a WWE guy. He said he came from money. They should have tried John because he is the top guy in the area.

I don t think Cesaro really counts as the NXT roster, so you can t rank him as being the strongest man at NXT. Though I did think it was ridiculous to call Mason Ryan the strongest NXT wrestler while he was in the ring with Rusev, who seems far stronger.

My favorite part about Nxt is that it really is a great developmental. It speeds along the process so that we can get an idea much sooner about who has it and who doesn’t, and who could be a diamond in the rough. So we don’t have to languish in agony forever watching Raw and Smackdown for guys like MVP and Batista to suddenly figure out how to play to their strengths and actually be good at this whole wrestling things. It teaches guys like Seth Rollins how to emphasize all his best assets before he gets on Raw so he can look at as great as he does now. And maybe one day Corey Graves will figure it all out before he inevitably gets called up so we don’t have to sit through garbage before they hand him his walking papers.

I think i really hated this episode for the most part: Bayley cutesy schtick is annoying as hell; that divas match was probably the worst NXT match i’ve seen; i like the bulgarian dude, but Mason Ryan is as terrible as ever.

“The announce team tries to get Mason Ryan over as “the strongest person on the NXT roster,” which is total, total bullshit, both because of Mason’s powerless vanity muscles and because Antonio Cesaro was JUST here.”

Mason Ryan, the strongest person on the NXT roster? He wasn’t even the strongest man in that NXT match.

I like to imagine that while this match was being recorded, JBL was at home eating dinner with his family, and then for no apparent reason he just jumps up, flipping the table over and shouting “WHU-HUH-HAT A CLOTHESLINE!”

(Because no brutal clothesline can happen anywhere on Earth without JBL marking for it)

also, I like the new camera from the cieling that they only used for one second in that mason ryan/alexander rusev match and I’m feeling like they only brought it up for adriane nevielle’s finisher exclusively and I don’t understand why they didn’t show us zayn’s helicopter sell of swagger’s clothsline from it.

Ales Riley is just the worst. During the main event he couldn’t believe the crowd were cheering for Zayn (the face) and not Swagger (member of immigrant hating stable). And he just generally sounds like someone who’s never watched wrestling before.

And God, that Graves match. I was so bored I couldn’t stop thinking how badly he looks like he needs a good wash.

All he has to do is turn his experiences with the Miz and make them into general statements.

Instead of saying “When I tagged with the Miz, we liked to tag in and out lots to stay fresh” he could say something like “it’s really important to tag in and out of a match to stay fresh and have an upbeat tempo on your opponent who has been in the ring a while.”

He makes the same point, but the latter sounds more professional than the former.

1) Charlotte reminds me of a 5 year old kid playing a fighting a video game and has figured out how to get his character to roll around and do flips. Since the kid thinks the flips are cool, he/she continues to do them regardless if it does any damage to their opponent. I get she wants to show off her athleticism, but, she doesn’t have to be flipping around the ring the whole time. It takes away from her actual moves.

1A) Alicia Fox needs a gimmick and entrance music change. I think she could be a perfectly cromulent entertainer if they spent some time developing her character. She has a nice looking northern lights suplex, so, maybe they should give her a few more suplexes in her moveset.

1B) Aksana is terrible. She botched her “sexy” crawl around her opponent taunt, for cripes sakes! That should be a future endeavored offense.

2) I think Corey Graves biggest problem is that the guy doesn’t look the part of his gimmick. He comes out to screamo metal or whatever and is supposed to be some punk(?). The problem with this is that Graves looks like a hipster Starbucks barista. People don’t buy him as some kind of slugger who can go toe-to-toe with anyone. He should have a different fighting style. Or learn some more f*cking moves instead of pressing the A button.

3) +1 goes to wardrobe for giving Summer Rae that amazing dress that Rosa Mendez wore on Raw in an episode where she walks past face CM Punk backstage and Punk turns his head to check her ass out before the show went to commercial. She looked amazeballs in that dress.

I like what she’s doing with Sasha Banks. It’s just too bad Sasha Banks can’t act. Seriously, was Summer Rae placed into the scene after the taping and they just told Sasha Banks to pretend someone was talking to her? Her acting was Eva Marie levels bad.

I hope charlotte will get better, I hope they start caring about alicia fox, I hope they fire aksana, I hope they make corey graves a jobber until they release him and I absoloutly love summer rae now !

One last thing: I like Bayley but her gimmick is problematic because she’s a naive, star-struck wrestler (simpleton?) that has an unfortunate Eugene stench still attached to her.

The star-struck part of her gimmick has kind of run its course. There’s no point in her being in awe of these ‘heroes’ of hers because in the past 3 weeks she almost beat the Women’s champion and she just pinned a former women’s champion. She knows she belongs.

As for the naive part, if they’re trying to make her this ‘barely legal’ diva, then give her pig-tails and a school girl skirt so we know she’s supposed to be really young and not know anything about life. Or if she’s naive about life because she is terrible about life decisions, then make her like Honey from How I met your Mother and put her in situations that make you say ‘Oh Bayley.’ Either way, a little more explanation of what she is supposed to be would be nice. . . especially when they fully get rid of the remaining Eugene stench off of her

After the Melon Corey and the Infinite Boredom match ended, O’Brian hilariously ran towards Neville who was standing on the apron on the opposite side from Corey Graves for whatever reason, and he didn’t even catch him, but Neville still dropped on the apron and off it like he got shot and for some reason, that whole post-match ordeal is the funniest thing that I just couldn’t help but replay a few hundred times.